5 Great Fonts for Book Covers

One of the most consistent and easily corrected mistakes I see with book covers that are designed by authors is weak or inappropriate typography. Given that a book cover usually has very few words on it, and those words (title, subtitle, author’s name) have a huge influence on buying decisions, this can be a major problem.

For instance, if you’re writing about a topic considered masculine and aimed at a male audience, does it help you to have an overly-embellished or feminine typeface that’s barely readable on your book cover? No, I don’t think so either. Or for a historical romance, you wouldn’t want a modern clean sans serif typeface like Helvetica for your cover. It would simply look dangerously out of place.

How Inappropriate Typefaces Happen

The reasons some authors end up with this kind of typography on their book covers include:

A lack of design training

Only judging what is seen on the screen and being unable to visualize the effect on a printed cover

Using the typefaces that came with the computer

This last reason is probably the most common. After all, when you look down that long list of fonts, it seems that there should be something there that’s usable, right? But that’s not always the case.

Display fonts are different from text fonts. Their weights, spacing, set widths and many other tiny details differ. It’s difficult to impossible to make a text typeface look really good on a book cover. I’m not saying you’ll never see this done well, but it’s much more likely that the cover you’re looking at with that gorgeous Garamond on it was done by a professional designer with years of experience and a lot of graphic tricks up her sleeve.

No, it’s far better for amateurs to use display typefaces when it comes to their book covers. To help out, here are 5 typefaces, some of them free, that you can experiment with on your book covers.

5 Great Fonts for Your Book Cover

To get you started, I’ve collected 5 great fonts for book cover design. Even better, three of them are free, and you can download them at fontsquirrel.com, so start experimenting with these for your book cover.
1. Chunk Five (free from fontsquirrel.com): This meaty and emphatic slab serif font is ideal for book titles in numerous genres. Try this font for action-oriented or political stories. Here’s a cover I did for an around-the-world sailing story:

League Gothic (free from fontsquirrel.com): This sans serif font is very vertical, which is ideal for book titles. League Gothic would be a great choice for thrillers or business books, and it can be useful if you have a very long title, too. Here’s a sample on Joanna Penn’s terrific thriller.

Trajan (available from Adobe): You might recognize Trajan, and that’s because it’s been used for more movie posters than any other font. It works quite well on books, too. This classic font is appropriate for histories, novels, and historical fiction, among others. Check out the French film poster using Trajan.

Franchise (free from Font Pro): Another tall and meaty sans serif, just ideal for the right book cover treatment. Franchise would be a great pick for a historical epic, for mysteries, or for thrillers. Here’s a sample of a novel in a gritty urban setting.

Baskerville (many versions available): Sometimes you need to have a straight roman typeface for your title, and in that case I like to use one of the variations of Baskerville, a highly readable typeface. You might find Baskerville perfect for a memoir, a business book, or a historical romance. Here’s a sample, and a cover from Vintage Books that shows how effective it can be.

The best way to see the effect these fonts will have on your book is by trying them out. Since most of them are free, there’s no reason not to. Just looking at these fonts and imagining them on a book cover helps give you a sense of how the fonts you choose influence the look and tone of your book.

Hi Cassandra, and congratulations on writing your book. Unfortunately, I really can’t give you a list of appropriate type faces for the cover because it would be completely out of context with whatever the design of the cover is, and that’s something I don’t know. My suggestion is to hire a good cover designer, and rely on her to make these kinds of decisions. Good luck!

For my print book, I intend to use Footlight MT Light on my books front cover, back cover, front matter as well as my chapter headings. the body of my book is Times New Roman. I’m trying to learn about which fonts are accepted and I’m certainly hoping Footlight is. I’ve put one or two other fonts on my front cover and I don’t like the looks of them.

Do you see any issues with me using Footlight on my print book providing I embed the fonts?

Footlight MT is basically a text font, you might find something better that’s intended for display purposes. Times New Roman is intended for business documents, and better body text choices can be found here and here.

Hi Joel, I’m looking around in bestseller amazon about spiritual and inner growth books and many of them use siple text fonts instead of display ones. Is it an exeption? What do you would usually use for such genre of book? Any font in mind? Even not free like Adobe or Monotype is good!

Omar, when designers are looking for a minimalist or “Zen” look they will often use a text face (like Baskerville in the last sample in the article) to try to achieve that effect. Just depends on the overall look you want and what your audience will find attractive for that kind of book.

Wow Joel, you have been so fast to answer! Thanks a lot…I’m thinking to follow their style and I found a lot of Garamond in titles even if there are different ones too. Of course some of them are authors that famous that they could even use whatever font they like

Thank you. My artsy side was taking over my book cover, choosing things like Raven Song, and Swamp Witch. I saw your comment about making it look like a comic book. Yeah, no. So I went with the Roboto, and it’s cleaner, and easier to read

Years ago, long before the Internet was popular (and almost before it was invented), I had an old computer – a Sinclair QL. One of the “unique” talents of this machine was the ability to load a different font (fount, as Sir Clive called them) into memory. One particular font stuck in my mind, but I can’t remember its name…

Just recently, I saw it (or a very close variant of it), on an old Larry Niven book – Oath of Fealty. I don’t know if I can post links here (probably not), but if you go to the book’s Wikipedia page –https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_Fealty_(novel) – and look at the picture of the book, you’ll see the font I mean.

Can anyone tell me what the name of that font is? I’d be very grateful.

Hello there. I am currently writing a book on mental health. In brief, it is a book that looks at all aspects of mental health whilst also offering in depth guidance on how to help one’s self and also how friends and family can help their loved ones. There are also real life experiences too that come from real people, living or have lived with a mental illness.

I was wondering if you might have any tips or ideas of want font would work best for the book.

Vanessa, I think you should go look at some of the covers in our regular Ebook Cover Design Awards. You’ll be able to quickly scan through hundreds of covers and check out what fantasy books are using for cover fonts. Bonus: all the designers are linked in the articles. Hope that helps.

Hello, I have seen book covers with the font used on Joanna Penn’s book cover shown above.
Could you please tell me the name of the font used for “A Thriller By”? I too make book covers for others and I admire that font for the author name.

Thank you for all your articles they are thoroughly helpful. My friend asked me to design a cover for his book although i didn’t read it he told me its a romance novel with anger in it. So I figured flowery fonts for the cover wouldn’t work as well. I was wondering what you would suggest for such a book. Thank you for all your advice in this new world.

I just tried to download two of the fonts you recommended from Fontsquirrel, and my Norton anti-virus program kicked in both times. It says the source for these is unsafe, and it won’t let me download them. Have you ever experienced this?

Justin, not sure who “Chuck” is, but at this point I kind of trust fontsquirrel.com more than I might trust Norton. I’ve used the site for years and never had a problem with it or the fonts downloaded there.

Hi Joel, I have written 2 fantasy novels and a YA/ chick lit novel. What is a great cover typeface forn these genres? I have tried ones I have on my iPad, but they are all pretty standard and nothing convinces me. I am getting ready to submit a proof copy today.

Katherine, you might want to take a look at our monthly Ebook Cover Awards where lots of books in both those genres are displayed, and see the kinds of fonts professional book designers are using. Lots of ideas there.

Hi Joel!
I’m working on a book and I found an old Andy Warhol book from 1967 called “Stamped Indelibly” that uses a font inside that I want to try. Do you have any idea what that font might be or where I can find it? It’s a simple sans serif and I have pictures of it that I’m happy to send you but I don’t know where…?
Thanks so much,
Deborah

I just want to mention something. I come across many sites that offer free fonts. I also read blogs by font designers who are annoyed by their work showing up on those sites and irked by the people who use the fonts from those sites for their commercial projects without permission. They say it’s like losing two sales – one to the site that gains advertising revenue, and one to the person who snags the font for free instead of buying it. So, to people looking to use free fonts, please do a little research to make sure it’s okay.

Nova, that’s one of the reasons I use—and recommend—fontsquirrel.com, because they only deal in fonts that are licensed by their designers as free fonts, or fonts that are made free for a period of time by the foundries that own them. Not only that, the fonts are much higher quality than the huge “free font” sites you see all the time.

Thank you very much for the invaluable advice throughout your website, Joel. I am in the final stages for an upcoming series designed for parents and their young children. There will be a series title, main title (which changes per installment) and author name. Would it be overkill to have all three the same font? I am leaning toward Chunk Five, but League Gothic is also a close second. Any advice would be much appreciated, Mac

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"Writers change the world one reader at a time. But you can't change the world with a book that's still on your hard drive or in a box under your bed. This blog exists to help you get that book into people's hands."—Joel Friedlander